Evaluating Age and Growth Relationship to Ciguatoxicity in Five Coral Reef Fish Species from French Polynesia.

Ciguatera poisoning (CP) results from the consumption of coral reef fish or marine invertebrates contaminated with potent marine polyether compounds, namely ciguatoxins. In French Polynesia, 220 fish specimens belonging to parrotfish (, , and ), surgeonfish (), and groupers () were collected from two sites with contrasted risk of CP, i.e.

Relationship between swimming capacities and morphological traits of fish larvae at settlement stage: a study of several coastal Mediterranean species.

Experimental measurements were made in the laboratory to determine the swimming capacities of settlement-stage fish larvae of several Mediterranean coastal species collected from the nearshore waters of Corsica, France. Critical swimming speed (U , cm s ) was measured to provide a realistic laboratory estimate of in situ swimming speed. Morphometric traits were measured to assess potential predictors of a species' swimming ability and, when possible, daily otolith increments were used to estimate age.

Extent of mangrove nursery habitats determines the geographic distribution of a coral reef fish in a South-Pacific archipelago.

Understanding the drivers of species' geographic distribution has fundamental implications for the management of biodiversity. For coral reef fishes, mangroves have long been recognized as important nursery habitats sustaining biodiversity in the Western Atlantic but there is still debate about their role in the Indo-Pacific. Here, we combined LA-ICP-MS otolith microchemistry, underwater visual censuses (UVC) and mangrove cartography to estimate the importance of mangroves for the Indo-Pacific coral reef fish Lutjanus fulviflamma in the archipelago of New Caledonia.